


Watched and unseen

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Canon Retelling, F/F, attempted suicide, canon suicide attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anthy's spent so long being watched - by her brother, by the princes who duel for her, and by herself - that she's forgotten what it feels like to act like there's nobody watching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watched and unseen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Harukami](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harukami/gifts).



Anthy Himemiya knows she’s being watched wherever she goes.

Not that she goes far. She goes to her classes, she goes home, and when the rose seal calls her, she goes to the arena where her princes stop watching her for a few precious minutes while they concentrate on fighting each other instead. Even when the duelists aren’t looking at her, though, Anthy can feel her brother’s eyes on her. Even when he’s not watching her – well, she never really knows that he isn’t watching her. Sometimes she just can’t see him. But even when he’s nowhere to be seen, somehow he knows.

A new girl walks into the arena with a wooden sword and a fire in her eyes that Anthy hasn’t seen from any of the usual duelists in a long time. The way she looks at Anthy, it’s different from the way any of the others do. And even as she duels, she looks back to Anthy sometimes, like she has to remember what she’s fighting for.

The same thing everyone else is fighting for, Anthy thinks, resigned, but in the depths of her hearts where nobody can see, she hopes this girl will win.

 

Saionji was okay, really. As far as champions go… well, it was hard to think of anyone who could be worse, really, but when you’ve been handed from one victor to another since time immemorial, they all fade into one.

Utena is different. She had to be, or Anthy would never have gotten so attached to her. Utena doesn’t look at her like a thing to win and keep, or a prize, or a tool. She looks at Anthy like she’s a puzzle to figure out, if anything. She looks at her like she’s something to be saved. She still doesn’t see, doesn’t really see, that Anthy isn’t just a _something_ at all, but she tries, bless her heart. She tries to see the person behind the princess, and if she still doesn’t understand all of her then at least she’s trying.

Anthy didn’t dare to hope that Utena _really_ meant it until she wasn’t Utena’s any more. When the petals of Utena’s rose fluttered onto the arena floor, Anthy felt more sorrow than she had over a duelist in a long time, but the kindness of one teenage girl wasn’t enough to overcome a lifetime of practice. She fell into step behind Touga as he left the arena without a moment’s thought.

It had never hurt like this to play her part, though. Utena didn’t know the rules, they all knew that, but when she ran up to Anthy the next day between classes, trying to talk to her like things were just as they had always been, it had never hurt so much to play her part and pretend that Utena was nothing but an acquaintance now. Seeing Utena’s hurt at Anthy’s coldness just made her want to reach out, to touch her, to scream _I’m still here, I’m just not allowed to tell you_.

“She still just wants to own you,” Touga murmured into her neck that night, and Anthy startled. “She’s like any of the rest of us. Saionji wanted to rule you, Utena wants to save you. It’s just another way of putting you in your place.”

_You don’t know that_ , she wanted to say, as Touga worked his way down her throat to her chest, but kept silent, kept her face passive, so it wouldn’t show a trace of the resentment she felt that even when she thought her feelings were secret, Touga had been watching.

Anthy’s good at following the script when one of her former princes is defeated in a duel. When Utena wins her back, she thinks she can feel the façade cracking. Utena says that Anthy is _home_ , and when Anthy looks back at her she can’t disguise the way that she feels the same.

Who’s she keeping up this act for right now, anyway? She hopes her brother’s watching. She hopes he’s scared.

 

It’s not as though she’s powerless. She can still act out when she’s being watched, too. Just because people are watching, doesn’t mean they always see what’s in front of them. It’s not for nothing that the stories call her a witch, either. There are plenty of little things she can do that nobody else will see.

She shouldn’t torment Touga’s sister, of course. She knows she shouldn’t. The girl can’t help what she stumbled into. But she acts so rashly, so harshly and with so much impotent fury towards Anthy that it’s impossible to resist getting a jab back at her, whether it’s with an egg or a cowbell. She gets so few chances to really stretch her powers these days, and not even Nanami’s brother seems to care where these pranks come from.

Anthy knows it must be just as hard for Nanami to be so ignored as it is for Anthy to have no privacy at all. It’s just so hard not to resent her.

She can still keep secrets under the constant gaze of brothers and princes and friends. Every one of her suitors has left secrets with her, things they’d rather others not hear, from Touga’s perversions to Saionji’s tears. They know the Rose Bride starts anew with each prince who wins her hand, that she’ll act like the others never existed. They don’t want to lose her, but they know if they do that she’ll never breathe a word of their secrets to anyone. To them it’s safety; to her those secrets are treasures more valuable than anything else she owns, the one thing she gets to keep.

Anthy doesn’t keep secrets for Utena, though, because Utena doesn’t seem to have any. Utena does everything like there’s nobody watching and she has nothing to be ashamed of. Anthy wants to tell her to be careful sometimes, to protect her, but that’s not her role. The prince is there to protect the Rose Bride. And in her most selfish heart, Anthy doesn’t want Utena to change, to become careful and guarded and masked the way everyone else in the council is. She doesn’t want to stop feeling like she can watch Utena all she wants without being ashamed.

Even if she has no secrets, though, Anthy still gets to see Utena in ways that nobody else does.

Utena’s just as unguarded about sex as she is about everything else. She’s shy and uncertain, to be sure, but when Anthy’s hands are on her, making her whimper and groan, she’s as loud and shameless as she is in anything else. Anthy, on the other hand, is torn, for once. She wants to give Utena everything, to take her mask off, let out the stream of words on her lips about how gorgeous Utena is, how much Anthy wants her, how she _burns_ to feel Utena’s fingers and lips on her sometimes. To arch and yell when she comes, just like Utena does. Yet she can’t shake the feeling that her brother _knows_ what she’s doing, even here in her own bed. She’s caught, always, between being distant and losing herself in Utena.

 

Anthy’s never been on the roof before. Up there in the wind at night, with the rest of Ohtori Academy stretched out beneath her, nobody looks up. She’s used to feeling lonely, but not to feeling _alone_.

She doesn’t know whether Akio is watching her up here. It’s entirely possible that one way or another, he knows that she’s there, just as he seems to know everything she does, always waiting to step in. But the student council don’t know, for all that they meet up here. She can look down on their balcony and see it sitting empty. She’s supposed to be their responsibility, their colleague and their prize all in one, but for now, at least, she’s escaped their custody too.

She doesn’t know whether anyone can watch her up here, but it doesn’t feel like it. It feels so different, like _such_ a change, that she thinks it must be true. She never really knows when she’s being watched from one moment to the next, but she feels _so_ free right now, so completely unseen and secretive and in control of her life for once, that surely nobody can be watching her now.

For a moment, the change terrifies her. It’s been an eternity since she was last her own person, since she was out of anybody’s sight. Anything could happen to her right now, anything at all, and nobody would be there to stop it. She hasn’t been without a prince to protect her in a very, very long time either. Saionji might have beaten her, but at least she belonged to someone then. Up here, she’s nobody’s.

No. Not nobody’s. When nobody’s watching her, she’s her _own_.

It’s funny, she thinks, that she finds the courage to step out on her own without anyone’s watchful protection when she’s preparing to hurt herself. But there’s no escape, and she knows it. There’s no other way she’ll ever escape her brother’s possessive gaze. And now even Utena looks at her with distance, like a stranger. Utena, who wanted so badly to be different but still just sees her as a thing to be protected. Utena was sweet and kind and didn’t get it, but she tried and that was enough, for a while, until Akio had to take that from her too, make Utena watch her with suspicion and distance, watching her more closely than ever, with fear and suspicion and everything that she’d hoped Utena wouldn’t become.

She steps forward, her toes dipping over the edge of the roof, and savours the wind whipping the hem of her nightdress around her legs. The cold, the lights below, and the stars above her, too. It’s not as if she wants to end her life, not really, but here, at last, unseen, she can be alone. She looks up at the stars one more time before she closes her eyes and leans forward to the tipping point to hurtle over the edge.

When she feels Utena’s familiar fingers clasp around her wrist, pulling her back, all she wants to do is cry. Anthy’s tried, she’s tried everything she can, but even when she can escape Akio, it seems she can never escape from being trapped in _someone’s_ gaze.

But when she finally brings herself to meet Utena’s eyes, she realises that after all these months of looking, finally, Utena _sees_.

 

Anthy knows she’s being watched when she walks to the gates of Ohtori Academy, alone at last. Sure, most of the student body have forgotten Utena, and never knew what to think of Anthy in the first place except that she was quiet and strange. Touga was watching, though, and she’s sure that Juri and Miki must have at least seen her, too. Most of all, she knows her brother is sitting up in his tower, watching her every step, certain that any moment she’s going to turn back.

It feels much the same as it did that night on the roof when she was going to jump, and she thought she was finally out of sight. Then she was afraid to have nobody watching over her, but now she just feels free. Utena’s still out in the world somewhere, no matter how hard Akio tried to hide her. Anthy’s good at secrets. She’ll figure it out. And in the mean time, she can fight her own battles, and be her own prince. Until she finds Utena, and then they can watch each other’s backs.

When she steps through the gates, there’s a moment when she can’t quite believe she’s free. She still expects her brother to appear beside her, or Touga and Saionji with their condescending smiles saying that she must have someone protect her, or to feel the pain of a hundred burning swords pinning her down.

But she keeps walking down the hill, and then she’s out of his sight. It was as easy and as hard as that.


End file.
